California plunges into the unknown in expanding class sizes

04-08-2011

Opinion by Michael Kirst/Thoughts On Public Education

Michael Kirst, Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University, is President of the California State Board of Education, a position he held from 1977 to 1981 as well.

Even before the negotiations concerning tax extensions collapsed, California’s class sizes were ballooning. Now we are exacerbating class size increases, but there is no research to predict or understand future implications. Class size studies have focused on ranges from 30 to 15. Results are contested, but no study has examined California’s “natural experiment” of moving many classes in K-4 from 20 to 1 to 35-40 to 1 in a few years. Moreover, almost all research is on grades K-8, but high school classes in social studies, for example, are climbing into the 35-40 range in several districts. We are flying blind into an uncertain future. The only cap on class size in California seems to be the square-foot size of the classroom. (more...)

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California plunges into the unknown in expanding class sizes

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